Lit Protocol Community Update: May '23
A Monthly Newsletter on all things Lit.
Lit Protocol is a decentralized key management network powered by threshold cryptography. A blockchain-agnostic middleware layer, Lit can be used to power encryption, signing, and compute for web3 applications.
Intro.
Welcome to the Lit community update! This is the sixth edition of our monthly newsletter and our third update of the new year.
To learn more about the protocol and start building with our tools today, check out our developer docs. You can also find us on Twitter or join our developer community on Discord.
Without further ado, let’s jump right in!
General Updates.
World Changing Idea: Lit Protocol Selected by Fast Company
We are thrilled to share the incredible news that Lit has been recognized by Fast Company as a "World Changing Idea". We are deeply grateful for the hard work and dedication of our talented team, our partners, and the amazing community of builders who share our mission to create a more open, secure, decentralized, and human-centered web!
Introducing Chronicle: Lit’s L2 Rollup Built on the OP Stack
Lit has migrated from Polygon Mumbai to our very own rollup built on the Optimism stack. This migration helps facilitate cheaper transactions and greater throughput. The purpose of the rollup is to enable persistent shared state among the Lit nodes. While Lit is not a blockchain itself, the protocol does contain several on-chain elements, namely smart contracts that help coordinate and manage state among the Lit nodes. These contracts help facilitate the minting of new Programmable Key Pairs (which exist on-chain as ERC-721 tokens) and registering associated permissions and authentication logic, which have been deployed to Chronicle.
Discord Revamp
We reorganized our Discord server to ensure that it continues to serve as a welcoming, collaborative, and easy-to-use space for those building within the Lit ecosystem. The changes are focused on making the onboarding process as seamless as possible and making sure that we are able to provide the most effective developer support possible. Check out the new changes for yourself by joining the community!
Contract Redeployment
The Lit Protocol Serrano contracts were recently redeployed! Any PKPs that were created using the old contracts will have to be re-minted using the Lit explorer. Going forward, we will be implementing a system of proxy contracts to ensure that the developer experience isn’t interrupted.
Programmable Key Pairs on Cosmos!
Lit can now be used to send and sign transactions on Cosmos-based chains! With the new upgrade, PKPs can be used as a valid Cosmos signer. Check out the above demo app to experiment with minting PKPs and using them to send transactions on Cosmos-based chains (starting with the Cosmos Hub). If you are building on Cosmos and would like to explore building with PKPs, please get in touch.
Around the Ecosystem.
Updates from the community!
Cross-Chain Bridging with Yacht X Lit
"It’s 2023, and transferring assets across chains should be trustless, verifiable, and instantaneous... Fortunately, Lit’s Programmable Key Pairs and Lit Actions bring us one step closer to that goal.” Check out the post above to learn how PKPs and Lit Actions can be used to enable seamless cross-chain swaps.
Curve Labs: Lit Privacy SDK
The Lit Privacy SDK enables developers to build privacy-preserving applications on public blockchains, such as:
- Private voting where token holders cast votes secretly.
- Allow token holders to verify and prove membership in a group while maintaining privacy.
- Privacy-preserving transactions.
- And more...
Token-Gated Video Streaming with Livepeer X Lit
Check out this amazing guide showing how developers can use Lit with Livepeer to build token-gated video applications and enable creators to token-gate their video behind specific tokens, NFTs, addresses, and more.
Lit Hackathon Resources
This guide provides an in-depth overview of the resources and tooling available for developers interested in building with Lit at a hackathon! The next event that the team will be sponsoring is EthGlobal Waterloo, which will be kicking off on June 23 in Canada!
EthTokyo Recap
The team had the privilege of hanging out with tons of builders at this year’s EthGlobal hackathon in Tokyo. It was amazing to get to collaborate with some of the most talented devs in the space and see all of the amazing projects that came out of this 36 hour event! Take a look at the post above to check out all of the winning projects building with Lit.
Ecosystem RFPs
Interested in building with Lit but not sure where to get started? We have continued to add additional requests to our Request for Ecosystem Proposals page. Here you will find some ideas for projects and tooling that we are looking to sponsor through our grants program.
Build with Lit
If you’re interested in integrating Lit into your existing project, or want to build something completely new using Lit infrastructure, check out our grants program. We are looking to fund developers who have a passion for building innovative solutions to the current shortfalls of web3.
Community Calendar
To ensure you never miss a beat, subscribe to our community calendar. Here you can find the schedule for our Office Hours, additional community events, conferences, announcements, and more.
Content Recap
Featured posts from the month of April.
Sign Everything: Authenticity in the AI Era
Read about Lit’s key management solution can be used to preserve truth in the age of AI!
Hackathons and Events
— Aragon’s DAO Global Hackathon 2023 ends on May 7th, so you still have time to register! $5k up for grabs for the best use of PKPs and Lit Actions to automate DAO onboarding or governance.
— The deadline to register for the FVM Dataverse Hackathon is May 23. We will be sponsoring two bounties for best use of PKPs and Lit Actions.
— Come hang out with the team at EthGlobal Waterloo! The hackathon runs from June 23-25 and the deadline to apply is the 1st of June!
Coming soon 👀
Here are some of the things to look forward to in the months ahead:
- The release of our open-source interface for managing the assets in your PKP cloud wallet is coming very soon! This will provide a home for viewing and sending your tokens and NFTs, “installing” dApps, and assigning arbitrary logic via Lit Actions.
- Decentralizing the Lit Network! Right now, test networks are running with a few node operators and the distribution process is ongoing.
Wrapping up…
This wraps up our May update! If you enjoyed it, you can click below to subscribe and receive future updates directly in your inbox.
Once again, you can find us on Discord with any questions, concerns, or feedback.
Until next time,
alt signing out.